# lac
## English
### Pronunciation

* IPA: /læk/
** Audio (Southern England):(file)
* Rhymes: -æk

### Etymology 1

From Portuguese laca, from Hindi लाख (lākh)/Urdu لاکھ (lākh) or cognates in other Indo-Aryan languages, from Sanskrit लाक्षा (lākṣā). Doublet of lacquer.

#### Noun

lac (countable and uncountable, plural lacs)
* A resinous substance or lacquer produced mainly on the banyan tree by the female of Kerria lacca, a scale insect.

##### Derived terms

* Ceylon lac
* lac dye
* lac insect
* lac lake
* lac scale
* lac tree
* Mexican lac
* seedlac
* shellac
* sticklac

##### Translations
### Etymology 2
#### Noun

lac (plural lacs)
* Dated spelling of lakh.
** 1804, R[obert] Montgomery Martin, quoting Yashwantrao Holkar, “Section II. European Intercourse—Rise and Growth of British Power.”, in The Indian Empire: […], volume I (History, Topography, Population, Government, Finance, Commerce, and Staple Products), London; New York, N.Y.: The London Printing and Publishing Company, published [1858], →OCLC, page 399, column 2:[…] Lake [i.e., Gerard Lake, 1st Viscount Lake] should not have leisure to breathe for a moment, and calamities would fall on lacs of human beings in continued war by the attacks of his army, which would overwhelm like the waves of the sea.
** 1878 August, “Contemporary Portraits. New Series.—No. 8. Charles Darwin, F.R.S.”, in The University Magazine: A Literary and Philosophic Review, volume II, London: Hurst & Blackett, […], →OCLC, page 154:The Laccadives and Maldives, for instance, meaning literally the "lac of islands" and the "thousand islands," are a series of such atolls; […]

### Etymology 3

From Cadillac.

#### Noun

lac (plural lacs)
* (slang) Clipping of Cadillac.
    Synonyms: caddie, caddy
    Last night I was driving around in my lac.
** 1992, Big Mello, Bone Hard Zaggin, Rap-A-Lot Records, track 5. "Mac's Drive 'Lac's"
    Macs drive lacs.
** 2005, “Drive Slow”, in Late Registration, performed by Kanye West:The candy gloss is immaculate, it's simply amazing / Them elbows poking wide on that candy ’Lac

### Etymology 4

From laceration.

#### Pronunciation

IPA: /læs/
* Rhymes: -æs

#### Noun

lac (countable and uncountable, plural lacs)
* (medicine, colloquial) Laceration.
    hand lac

### Anagrams

* ACL, CLA, Cal, Cal., LCA, alc, cal, cal.

## Aromanian
### Etymology

From Latin lacus (“lake”), from Proto-Italic *lakus, from Proto-Indo-European *lókus (“lake, pool”).

### Noun

lac
* lake

## Dalmatian
### Etymology

From Latin lacus (“lake”), from Proto-Italic *lakus, from Proto-Indo-European *lókus (“lake, pool”).

### Noun

lac m
* lake

## Franco-Provençal
### Alternative forms

* lac (Bressan)

### Noun

lac (ORB, broad)
* Alternative form of lèc (“lake”)

### References

* lac in DicoFranPro: Dictionnaire Français/Francoprovençal – on dicofranpro.llm.umontreal.ca

## French
### Etymology

Inherited from Middle French lac, from Old French lac, a replacement of earlier lai (“pit, trench, ditch, grave, mere, pond”) (see Old French lac). Generally inferred as a borrowing of Latin lacus (“lake”), from Proto-Italic *lakus, from Proto-Indo-European *lókus (“lake, pool”).

### Pronunciation

* IPA: /lak/
* Audio (Paris):(file)
* Audio (Paris):(file)
* Rhymes: -ak
* Homophones: lacs, laque, laquent, laques

### Noun

lac m (plural lacs)
* lake

#### Derived terms

* Grands Lacs
* il n’y a pas le feu au lac
* lac Léman
* lac Poyang
* lac salé

### Further reading

* “lac”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.

### Anagrams

* ACL

## K'iche'
### Noun

lac
* (Classical K'iche') plate

## Latin
### Alternative forms

* lact, lacte

### Etymology

From lact by simplification of a word-final sequence of two plosives (the variant nominative/accusative form lacte shows the addition of a vowel as an alternative). The etymology is controversial: there is no consensus on the cognate set, the manner of descent (inheritance vs. borrowing), or the form and ultimate origin of the etymon. Possible cognates include Ancient Greek γάλα, γᾰ́λᾰκτ-/γᾰ́λᾰκ- (gála, gắlăkt-/gắlăk-, “milk”), Old Armenian կաթն (katʻn, “milk”) (or perhaps only its variant form Old Armenian *կաղց (*kałcʻ), reconstructed as the ancestor of modern dialectal Armenian կախց (kaxcʻ)) Hittite 𒂵𒆷𒀝𒋻 (galaktar, “balm, resin”), Albanian dhallë (“buttermilk”), Romanian zară (“buttermilk”) and Waigali zōr (“milk”).
Pokorny reconstructs the Latin and Greek words as inherited from Proto-Indo-European *glakt n from a root *glag- or *glak-. De Vaan derives the Latin, Greek and Armenian forms from Proto-Indo-European *gl̥gt-, and follows Meiser in explaining the loss of initial *g- in Latin as a result of long-distance dissimilation. Per Nielsen, the Latin and Greek words can be derived from *glakt-, Old Armenian *կաղց (*kałcʻ) can be derived from *g(a)l(ḱ)t- (requiring an initial non-palatal velar), and Albanian dhallë can perhaps be derived from *ǵal(K)- (requiring an initial palatal velar); on the basis of the variability in the initial consonant and the unusual root structure, Nielsen considers the root to be non-Indo-European in origin.
There have been attempts to derive the word instead from the root *h₂melǵ- (“milk”).
* Garnier, Sagart and Sagot 2017 cite Garnier 2016's reconstruction of a verb *ambĭ-blactāre (“to milk with both hands”) > *amblactāre, supposing this was subsequently reanalyzed as *amb-lactāre and lost the prefix to yield the attested verb lactāre. The noun lac(t) would then derive by back-formation from the verb lactāre.

### Pronunciation

* (Classical Latin) IPA: /lak/, [ɫ̪äk]
* (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA: /lak/, [läk]

### Noun

lac n sg (genitive lactis); third declension
* milk
    Cum lacte nutricis. ― With the nurse's milk.
* for something sweet, pleasant
    In melle sunt linguae sitae vostrae atque orationes, lacteque; corda felle sunt lita, atque acerbo aceto.In honey your tongues and speeches are dipped, and in milk; your hearts are smeared with gall and with bitter vinegar. (Plautus)
    Ut mentes ... satiari velut quodam jucundioris disciplinae lacte patiantur.That minds may endure being satisfied as by the milk of a more pleasant discipline. (Quintilian)
* milky juice
    Lac herbae. ― Milk of a plant.
    cum lacte veneni. ― with poisonous milk.
** c. 1st century BCE, Anonymous (formerly misattributed to Ovid), Nux
    Lamina mollis adhuc tenero dum lacte, quod intro est, nec mala sunt ulli nostra futura bono.As their nutshell still remains soft with something tenderly milky inside, my future fruits are not good to anyone.
* (poetic) milk-white color
** 2 CE, Publius Ovidius Naso, Ars Amatoria I.290:Forte sub umbrosis nemorosae vallibus Idae candidus, armenti gloria, taurus erat, signatus tenui media inter cornua nigro; una fuit labes, cetera lactis erant.As fortune had it, in the shadowy valleys of forested Ida, there was a white bull, the glory of its herd, marked by slightly black colour between its horns; the blemish was (only) one, the rest were milk-white.

#### Declension

Third-declension noun (neuter, imparisyllabic non-i-stem), singular only.

#### Derived terms

* ā lacte cūnīsque (“from the cradle, from infancy”)
* lac pressum (“cheese”)
* tam similem, quam lactis (“as like as one egg is to another”)
* qui plus lactis quam sanguinis habet (“of tender age”)
* collactāneus
* lactāneus
* lactāris
* lactārius
* lactātum
* lacteō
* lacteolus
* lactēscō
* lacteus
* lacticīnium
* lactifer
* lactineus
* lactō
* lactoris
* lactōsus
* lactūca
* lactūcārius

#### Descendants

* Late Latin: lactis (see there for further descendants)
* →⇒ English: lactic, lact(o)-
* → Esperanto: lakto
** Ido: lakto
* → Interlingua: lacte

### References

* 1 2 Nielsen, R.T. (2023) Prehistoric loanwords in Armenian: Hurro-Urartian, Kartvelian, and the unclassified substrate, pages 163-165,
* ↑ Pokorny, Julius (1959) “glag-”, in Indogermanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch [Indo-European Etymological Dictionary] (in German), volume 2, Bern, München: Francke Verlag, page 400
* ↑ De Vaan, Michiel (2008) “lac”, in Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages (Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series; 7), Leiden, Boston: Brill, →ISBN, page 320
* ↑ Romain Garnier, Laurent Sagart, Benoît Sagot (2017) “13. Milk and the Indo-Europeans”, in Martine Robbeets, Alexander Savelyev, editors, Language Dispersal Beyond Farming, John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2.2.2, page 302

### Further reading

* “lac”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
* “lac”, in Charlton T. Lewis (1891) An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
* lac in Charles du Fresne du Cange’s Glossarium Mediæ et Infimæ Latinitatis (augmented edition with additions by D. P. Carpenterius, Adelungius and others, edited by Léopold Favre, 1883–1887)
* Carl Meißner, Henry William Auden (1894) Latin Phrase-Book‎, London: Macmillan and Co. (ambiguous) to imbibe error from one's mother's breasts: errorem cum lacte nutricis sugere (Tusc. 3. 1. 2)

## Norman
### Etymology

From Old French lac, from Latin lacus (“lake”), from Proto-Italic *lakus, from Proto-Indo-European *lókus (“lake, pool”).

### Noun

lac m (plural lacs)
* (Jersey, geography) lake

## Old English
### Alternative forms

* læc

### Etymology

From Proto-West Germanic *laik, from Proto-Germanic *laikaz, compare *laikaną. Cognates include Old Norse leikr (whence Danish leg (“game”), Swedish leka (“to play”)), Gothic 𐌻𐌰𐌹𐌺𐍃 (laiks, “dance”).

### Pronunciation

* IPA: /lɑːk/

### Noun

lāc n or f
* play, sport
* battle, strife
* gift, offering, sacrifice, booty; message
** late 10th century, Ælfric, Lives of Saints
    Æfter þisum bebēad sē ablenda Datianus þæt mann his dēadan godas dēorwurþlīċe frætewode and þæt deofles templ mid dēorwurþan seolfre, and hēt þider lǣdan þone, wende þæt hē wolde wurþian his godas and his lāc ġeoffrian þām līflēasum godum.After this the blinded Datianus ordered that his dead gods be richly adorned and that the Devil's temple be adorned with silver, and ordered the faithful martyr to be brought to there, so that he would worship and offer sacrifices to the lifeless gods.
    Hie drihtne lac begen brohton.They both brought an offering to the Lord.

#### Declension
##### when neuter

Strong a-stem:

##### when feminine

Strong ō-stem:

#### Derived terms

* heaþolāc (“warfare”)
* wiflāc (“intercourse with a woman”)
* scīnlāc (“illusion, imagination, magical delusion”)

#### Related terms

* -lāc
* lācan
* lǣċan

#### Descendants

* Middle English: lok, loke, loc, loac, lock, lake, lac
** English: lake (dialectal)

## Old French
### Alternative forms

* lai (early)

### Etymology

Generally assumed to be a borrowing of Latin lacus (“basin, tank, tub, reservoir, pond”), displacing the native Old French lai (“pit, grave, trench, mere, pond”), inherited from the same Latin term, by the early 13th century. Latin lacus derives from Proto-Italic *lakus, from Proto-Indo-European *lókus (“lake, pool”),
The displacement of Old French lai may have been assisted by influence from early Middle English lac, lace (“lake, pond, pool", also "pit, ditch, trench”), from Old English lacu (“pool, pond, lake”), due to lac's sudden spread in Old French following the annexation of English controlled Normandy into the kingdom of France in 1204. An outright borrowing of the term from Middle English rather than from the Latin is also not outside the realm of possibility, as the earliest attestations of Old French lac are in the Eadwine Psalter (written by Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman scribes in England) and Erec and Enide (an Arthurian romance, whose author was heavily influenced by English, Anglo-Norman, and Celtic writings).
The Old Occitan lac, laz, latz (“snare, noose", also "pit, hole”), which some theorise as leading to the Old French form (with c), is actually derived from a different Latin root related to Old French laz (“snare, noose, lace”), and possibly conflated with Old High German lacha (“ditch, trench, pool”). See Italian lacca (“hole, pit”).

### Noun

lac oblique singular, m (oblique plural las, nominative singular las, nominative plural lac)
* lake

#### Descendants

* Middle French: lac
** → Middle English: lac
** French: lac
** Norman: lac (Jersey)

## Old Irish
### Etymology

From Proto-Celtic *laggos, from Proto-Indo-European *(s)leh₁g-.

### Pronunciation

* IPA: /l͈aɡ/

### Adjective

lac
* weak, feeble
* (hair) soft, smooth

#### Derived terms

* lacaid
* lacatus

#### Descendants

* Irish: lag
* Manx: lag
* Scottish Gaelic: lag

### Mutation

Note: Certain mutated forms of some words can never occur in Old Irish. All possible mutated forms are displayed for convenience.

### Further reading

* Gregory Toner, Sharon Arbuthnot, Máire Ní Mhaonaigh, Marie-Luise Theuerkauf, Dagmar Wodtko, editors (2019), “lac”, in eDIL: Electronic Dictionary of the Irish Language

## Romanian
### Etymology

Inherited from Latin lacus (“lake”), from Proto-Italic *lakus, from Proto-Indo-European *lókus (“lake, pool”). Compare Aragonese laco, Catalan llac, Esperanto lago, French lac, Italian lago, Maltese lag, Portuguese lago, Sardinian lagu, Spanish lago.

### Noun

lac n (plural lacuri)
* lake

#### Derived terms

* lăcos

## Romansch
### Etymology

(This etymology is missing or incomplete. Please add to it, or discuss it at the Etymology scriptorium.)

### Pronunciation

* This entry needs pronunciation information. If you are familiar with the IPA then please add some!

### Noun

lac m
* paint

#### Synonyms

* vernisch (Rumantsch Grischun, Sursilvan, Puter, Vallader), verneisch (Surmiran)

## Zazaki
### Alternative forms

* laj
* laz

### Etymology

Compare Middle Armenian լաճ (lač).

### Pronunciation

* (Northern Zazaki) IPA: [ˈlɑdz]
* (Southern Zazaki) IPA: [ˈlɑdʒ]
* Hyphenation: lac

### Noun

lac m
* son
    O lacê mıno. ― He is my son.
    Lacê to lacê mı rê vano. ― Your son says to my son.
* boy
    Çı lacê do rındo. ― What a beautiful boy.

### References

* ↑ Todd, Terry Lynn (2008) Brigitte Werner, editor, A Grammar of Dimili (also Known as Zaza)‎, an electronic version of printed second edition (2002), Giessen: Forum Linguistik in Eurasien e.V., page 145b
* ↑ Keskin, Mesut (2010) “lac”, in Wörterverzeichnis Zazaki-Deutsch, Deutsch-Zazaki‎ (PDF), page 9a